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Trump’s impeachment process will keep U.S fact-checkers busy

Poynter: “For the fourth time in history, a  United States president faces an impeachment. But this marks the first time an investigation like this will take place amid a tsunami of false news on social media. Fact-checkers have built creative strategies to surf this wave. On Sept. 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that President Donald Trump would be investigated for allegedly having pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesky to track the relationship between the family of former Vice President Joe Biden with a gas company in Ukraine. According to preliminary data revealed by a whistleblower, Trump told Zelesky that the Bidens were involved in corruption cases and should be investigated. Three days after the impeachment process was announced, the amount of misleading information around the case was so overwhelming that some of the most important U.S. fact-checkers decided to launch objective strategies to deal with it.

PolitiFact, The Washington Post Fact Checker and CNN, for example, have created unique pages on their websites where they will add all the fact checks they will do in the about Trump’s impeachment process. This means that they will have a single URL circulating on social media with all the true and false pieces of content they find. In one week, PolitiFact listed 17 stories, The Washington Post four and CNN nine. PolitiFact and The Washington Post took a second step. They launched online forms (here is PolitiFact‘s and here is WP‘s) so any citizen can request a fact check about a statement, a photo, a video or even an audio file they see regarding the case…”

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